Women’s Rights I Actually Care About Voting For (And The Ones I Don’t)

Can you believe it’s already Presidential Election season? If you feel a bit baffled about how it’s almost time to head to the ballot box, you're not alone. Plenty of people had their perception of time interrupted by the response to Covid-19. Somehow, we’ve already made it through four years under President Joe Biden, but after he recently pulled out from running for re-election, our main choices in November are either former President Donald Trump or current Vice President Kamala Harris. Each American is free to vote however they’d like, so I’d never pressure you into doing as I do, but I do want to offer you some cautionary advice. Elections should be about the issues, not the individual. As our culture has become increasingly narcissistic and caught up in the cult of celebrity, we miss out on honest exchanges about public policy issues and how to solve them. Amid a bloated bureaucracy, it’s tough to parse out which public policy issues you should care most about. Housing? Labor economics? Homeland security? Criminal justice? All pretty dry, huh? Well, what about reproductive justice or diversity, equity, and inclusion regulations? These emotionally charged issues tug at the heartstrings of voters across the nation who have been conditioned to prioritize the underdog above all else. Naturally, many are housed under the “women’s rights” umbrella. I’m sympathetic to an extent. I work for a women’s policy organization and write for a women’s magazine. Clearly, women’s issues make up a massive portion of my mental capacity. Despite this, I’m not impressed by what many consider the most pertinent issues for American women’s rights, and I believe that many undermine the well-being of women (and men, for that matter) across the nation. So, which policy issue areas do I think actually matter for girls' and women’s ability to thrive? Here are three of the biggest ones you should keep in mind ahead of this upcoming election. 1. Public Safety Policies Immigration Policy Any policy that threatens national security and civilian safety is, in my opinion, one of the most critical issues for women’s rights. If our nation cannot protect its women from harm, how are women expected to feel like we could maintain and even expand our great American population? It doesn’t matter if you were born here or if you immigrated here, a safe environment is of utmost importance for women to not only be able to raise children but to have a meaningful career and even walk freely outside without persistent, looming fear. What contributes to an unsafe environment? Let’s start from the outside and then work our way in. Being wary of illegal immigration doesn’t mean you’re a racist or a xenophobe. If you think people should enter the country legally, you’re a pragmatist who wants everyone to play by equal rules. Many women prioritize personal boundaries – after all, why else did the #MeToo movement become as big as it did? So what’s the deal with the cognitive dissonance where women can’t admit the same principle applies to border security? Just like boundaries for your body keep you safe, boundaries for your home protect you from burglars, and boundaries for your nation protect you from bad actors. In the first quarter of 2024, there were over 1.17 million encounters at America’s Southern border. This number should shock you. After all, in the entirety of 2021, there were around 1.66 million encounters, 2.2 million in 2022, and 2 million in 2023. So within one quarter, we were already close to the historic totals for an entire year. Recent data from the Pew Research Center indicates that 78% (yes, a vast majority) of Americans think this influx of migrants at our Southern border constitutes a major problem, if not a full-fledged crisis. Furthermore, 80% of those respondents said the federal government is mishandling the border crisis, and this sentiment didn’t discriminate between political parties. Our boundaries are weak because of the Biden administration’s open-border policy . People around the world know that it’s relatively easy to enter illegally. Some may simply be looking for a better life than what they have in their home country, but others are genuine troublemakers. Don’t get it twisted: Entering a country unlawfully is a criminal act, to begin with, but for plenty, it doesn’t stop there. Migrants with gang ties, and even those without, perpetrate unthinkable crimes against Americans. How many more tragic headlines will we have to read about female victims like Laken Riley , Jocelyn Nungary , Rachel Morin , and more, brutalized by sick lowlifes? Ask yourself – which candidate will reverse the devastating open-border immigration policies that are significantly threatening the safety not only of American girls and women but foreign women too? It’s in everyone’s best interest, no matter their sex, to have a secure border that permits legal entry rather than criminal behavior. There’s nothing compassionate for Americans or foreigners about refusing to enforce this law. Domestic Public Safety Another major issue I use to guide voting behavior is domestic public safety. When crime goes unpunished or when criminals are given a slap on the wrist before being released back into the public, cities and residential neighborhoods alike become unsafe places to raise families. “Defund the police” skyrocketed in popularity after the George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020. Criminal justice-minded reformers on the Left shouted for a decrease in police presence. But now, even some Democrats admit it was a massive mistake. It’s really a no-brainer – cutting cops out of the picture or reducing their funding allows criminal behavior to go overlooked and unpunished. But then, if criminals are caught, America’s new wave of progressive prosecutors (often funded heavily by George Soros) makes matters worse by failing to adequately penalize entire categories of crime like shoplifting, vandalism, and more. Their goal? They want to reduce mass incarceration, which they think would decrease criminal recidivism. The reality? More crime and more suffering – especially in poor and minority communities. Take Fairfax County, Virginia, for example. In 2019, Soros-backed Steve Descanso was elected as Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney. Shortly thereafter, all crimes in Fairfax increased , including aggravated assault by 43% and carjacking by 74%. In my own state, California, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon’s criminal justice reforms resulted in higher crime rates too – from shoplifting to drug abuse to homicide and more. Girls' and women's freedom of movement is on the chopping block thanks to these pea-brained policy decisions. I don’t feel safe whatsoever walking L.A. streets without my husband by my side, and I can’t imagine I’m the only one. 2. Worker’s Rights Whether feminists admit it or not, many women want to balance motherhood and a career. Some even want to forgo work for a little while to become stay-at-home moms and eventually re-enter the workforce with flexibility. “Trad” circles might insist that emancipating women from domesticity and siphoning them into the workforce was far too disruptive to our nature and destructive to gender roles as we know them, but those voices operate through a very myopic lens of human history. Haven’t women always worked in some capacity ? Maybe we weren’t breadwinning CEOs back in the day, but the notion that women shouldn’t work beyond domestic roles is truly a product of modern times. The idyllic vision of a working husband and a domestic wife was curated throughout the early to mid-20th century and romanticized through widely marketed, dreamy depictions of the fulfilled homemaker. Any policies that increase red tape for small business owners and reduce workplace flexibility negatively impact women’s rights. Let’s start with small businesses . Using Missouri as an example , as it mirrors national trends, one-third of small businesses are owned by women, and 80% of them operate sans staff. That means that a not-so-insignificant amount of small businesses are owned by women who are responsible for keeping their company’s lights on. Not only do excessive government regulations, like new reporting rules or manufacturing restrictions, strangle small businesses, but high interest rates and shocking levels of inflation also squash America’s unique entrepreneurial drive. How are small business owners supposed to stay afloat when, just to give a select few examples , manufacturing costs are 26% higher than they were three years ago, construction materials are 30% more expensive than they were pre-Biden, and product packaging components are 38% more expensive than they were three years ago? Teresa Bowman, a Salt Lake City, Utah salon owner, said she had to start paying her employees more (a side effect threatening over a quarter of independent salons ) because otherwise they might leave to take a $20/hour work-from-home laptop job. Carmelia Bello, a Brooklyn, New York bodega owner, said inflation is killing her business and she’s not alone. Many inner-city workers rely on these convenience-style stores for a quick bite but are increasingly aggravated by price hikes. And then there’s the gig economy. If you care about women’s rights in the same way that I do, you know how integral workplace flexibility is for a woman’s ability to generate income and balance family life. Get this: Freelancers make up almost 40% of the American workforce. Women – whether SAHMs or not – doing stenography, data entry, writing, graphic design, housekeeping, hairdressing, event planning, social media management, tutoring, consulting and more deserve to keep their gig worker status if they want it. Many don’t want to be forced into rigid 9-to-5 employment or union membership, for example. Sadly, those in the pro-organized labor camp can’t comprehend true workplace diversity and inclusion. Under the Biden administration, devastating legislation like California’s AB5 (sometimes called the “Uber bill”) went nationwide , threatening our nation’s 30 million female entrepreneurs and independent contractors. Dee Sova, a female independent truck driver (a notoriously male-dominated field), detailed in an op-ed how AB5 forced her hand. She had to move from California to Springfield, Missouri where she could continue to be her own boss and deliver goods as a contractor for the trucking company Prime Inc. There’s no rule that dictates you have to choose the baby or the bag – you can have both. It’s actually in our best interest as future (or current!) mothers to be educated, have marketable skills, and aspirations or ambitions beyond serving a man because you truly never know if or when you’ll have to support yourself. So, any politician who supports policies that threaten women’s livelihoods gets a no from me. 3. Sex-Based Rights How did it ever come to this? I’ve heard the Left once considered themselves to be the party of science, but lately, it seems like they can’t even nail down the basics. Men and women should be treated equally of course, but that doesn’t mean our bodies are interchangeable. We have biological differences that aren’t just skin deep – they develop in our earliest moments of life at the cellular level and profoundly affect how every other part of our bodies develops. Skeletal structure, muscle composition, lung capacity, body fat composition, organ size, and of course, hormonal levels all contribute to scientifically-proven physiological differences between the male and female sex. This is just one reason why we need to protect sex-based rights, and I refuse to support policies that subvert them. Most Americans say that the sex a person is “assigned” at birth determines whether they are a man or a woman, and 60% say that gender isn’t interchangeable. I’m super sympathetic to people who are a bit atypical. Some women might feel more masculine than other women do, and some men might prefer to be more feminine in their mannerisms or grooming. But these atypical deviations away from societal norms don’t mean that, deep down, a man who doesn’t identify as masculine is somehow a woman. Many issues arise when people blur the line between reality and delusion. First off, children are incredibly susceptible to these lies and, in some cases, have sadly become victimized by the “affirmation-only” camp of medical practitioners, therapists, educators, and more. Chloe Cole began identifying as a boy when she was 12 and went under the knife only three years later. Soren Aldaco began identifying as a boy when she was 11, started hormone replacement therapy when she was 17, and by 19, she had had a double mastectomy. Changing names is one thing. I knew plenty of kids growing up who preferred to go by their middle name or a nickname just because they didn’t like their normal first name. And I can even just roll my eyes at preferred pronouns. But taking experimental drugs and undergoing medically invasive surgeries reeks of child abuse to me. If it wasn’t, why else would young adult detransitioners Cristina Hineman , Prisha Mosley , Chloe Cole , Soren Aldaco , and Isabella Ayala be suing the people who pushed them along an irreversible, destructive path? I say all this because gender ideology stands at the core of sex-based issues. If not for radical gender ideology, women wouldn’t be experiencing the following problems: Mothers are denied their female identity and are degraded and dehumanized as birthing individuals , chestfeeders , or people who get periods . We’re not women, we’re just female-bodied . Boys and men are taking girls' and women’s sports titles and accolades and, in some cases, severely injuring them along the way. Young men identifying as transgender women are allowed entry into sororities – once thought to be a safe haven for sisterhood. Male criminals – some of whom are violent predators – can identify as a non-male gender and be housed in women’s prisons . Does no one in power see what’s wrong with housing male sex offenders with female inmates – a significant portion of whom are victims of abuse in the first place? The Biden-Harris administration even thought it would be smart to rewrite what sex discrimination means in Title IX regulations by nixing “sex” for “gender identity,” meaning that schools would have to allow males into female spaces. Male or female, both sexes deserve their own single-sex spaces. For all women who care about the preservation of male and female identities, I would strongly suggest rethinking their vote for a candidate who supports any method or measure to erase them. Closing Thoughts If you hop onto Cosmo or any other mainstream women’s publication and peruse their politics sections, you’re usually hit with one of three things: reproductive rights, environmental justice, and anti-racism. Very frequently, these are all divisive distractions done in bad faith. There’s nothing inherently wrong with an article about amazing black-owned businesses to shop on Amazon or ways to support victims of the Maui wildfires , but more often than not, these types of publications distract women from the very things that matter most for their health and happiness. Why doesn’t Cosmo have the guts to publish the perspectives of women up to their necks in bills directly caused by the Biden-Harris administration’s economic policies? Why won’t they discuss the tragic ramifications of open-border policies – from drug trafficking to human trafficking to theft and vandalism to genuine human casualties and more? American voters deserve government representatives with their best interests in mind – not special interests. And if you really do care about women’s rights, I’d encourage you to elect representatives to our government who at least know what a woman is .